Awake...

What if you wake up someday and gradually find out that everyone is fast asleep and not willing to wake up?? Roads are deserted, no policemen, no criminals, no doctors, no one to turn to take help of… Initially, you may just smile at your freedom. That you can buy whatever you wish to without paying, you may not have to work, and you can do whatever you wanted to. But when you realize that only humans are the ones who have fallen asleep and not the animals and that they are marching towards your city, what will you do? Oh, on top of that, the animals start talking to you in your language…

That's what Awake-by Egan Yip is all about. While searching randomly for some e-book to download, I came across this novel. Found the preface exciting so downloaded it. For grownups, who likes to read thriller or biographies, this novel may look kiddish (it actually may be for children below 15 years of age, but I enjoy being in this category at times J ). While reading this novel, I was constantly imagining that an animation movie is going on in front of my eyes. I wonder if any animation movie has been made on this, if not, it's a good plot.

Anyways, it's a story of two teen boys (Kevin and Andrew) who realize on a morning that everyone around them has fallen asleep mysteriously and not waking up. On top of that, the cats and dogs reveal that the animals understand human language and they can talk also but only in case of emergency like this. Normally, they pretend not to understand or speak human language for various reasons (to avoid becoming witnesses in criminal cases, for example). They tell these kids that there is an organization of animals (HPC) to take charge of the situation and know the reason for this sleeping epidemic. They decide to go to the nearest town to understand the situation and on their quest, they meet few more humans, many other animals (friendly animals). All of them try to keep themselves awake to avoid falling prey to this epidemic. Meanwhile, wild animals, who hate humans to the core, have started pouring in the city to take back their land. Kevin and team lands up in an underground lab to find that a scientist was doing experiment on whether people can connect with each other in their dreams while sleeping. The experiment turned wrong and the result outspread throughout the world leading to this epidemic. But now the scientist has also gone to sleep and so he cannot suggest any remedy to the problem.

When the kids and HPC are searching for a possible solution, they are continuously attacked by forest animals, who are controlled by a dragon who wants to kill all humans to take revenge against them for killing his bread to extinction. At this point, initially the fight between forest animals and kids was going good but it was over stretched. They were confronted over and over again. At one point, I thought that the fight is over and they will get back to reveal the solution to this sleeping epidemic but they were again attacked. In case, someone decides to make a movie out of this novel, please cut short this part…

On going back to the lab, a robot has designed a machine to let Kevin go into Dreamland and urge other people to wake up and come out of their dream (the ideal life that they want to lead and that they can do only in their dreams so, no one wants to wake up and Kevin got to make them realize that they cannot forever live in dreams). They finally succeed in waking up everyone and everything comes back to normal, without others knowing about the adventurous and horrible endeavor of these kids. The wild animals are back in forest, the dragon is dead and other animals are back to using their animal language, except with these kids. I enjoyed reading it, except the over stretched part of animals fighting with the kids. CHEERS!!!